Online Foundation Program

Foundation Online: Pathway to Paris The Paris College of Art Foundation course is built on the philosophy handed down from a century of artists, designers, and educators that there are common skills and approaches to all fields of art and design that are dynamic when taught together.

In the Foundation course, we teach students to be constantly looking for creative solutions to unexpected constraints.

In this spirit, we developed the ‘Foundation Online: Pathway to Paris’ course in response to the current world situation, as a way to engage first year students in the Foundation experience remotely.

Following the success of the program in Fall 2020, we decided to continue offering the Pathway program on a permanent basis.

Whether in-person or online, Paris College of Art brings together students from all over the world to work across disciplines and collaborate: imaginations combine in a sort of laboratory for future creativity.

Eyes and minds are opened up.

The online course establishes and maintains these essential student connections through allocated time for peer-to-peer exchange and collaborative work.

Going between hands-on, independent work and the intense virtual sharing of projects, the Pathway to Paris program recreates the energy that we generate in-studio classes at home.

Students will be expected to use basic tools that are to hand and to work predominantly with recycled materials, in keeping with our commitment to ecological responsibility.

The course begins with guidelines and inspiration about how to set up art school at home.

Foundation Online is structured around weekly assignments that parallel those offered in face-to-face classes.

The program follows a recurrent weekly structure: each week a new challenge is announced, and students tackle it first through drawing, then experiment in 2 and 3 dimensions, and finally translate it digitally.

While similar in intent and purpose, the curriculum of the Foundation options is slightly different.